The Guardian

Trial stemming from a 2014 standoff could be derailed by a ploy to pose as a ‘fake film company’ and an ethics scandal involving a BLM officer and Burning Man

FBI agents posed as journalists and tricked the Bundy ranching family and their supporters into giving on-camera interviews that prosecutors may use in upcoming trials, according to defense attorneys and court records.

The FBI’s “fake film production company” and “wide-reaching deceptive undercover operation”, as lawyers described it in a court filing, is one of multiple controversies that some say could derail the government’s prosecution of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, his four sons and a dozen of their followers. A recent Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ethics scandal involving tickets for the popular Burning Man festival could further hinder prosecutors in the high-profile trial, which began this week in Las Vegas federal court.

From Wordsworth’s gardens to the south’s white cliffs and salmon rivers in Wales, climate change is wrecking historic sites, finds report

Climate change is already wrecking some of Britain’s most significant sites, from Wordsworth’s gardens in Cumbria to the white cliffs on England’s south coast, according to a new report.

Floods and erosion are damaging historic places, while warmer temperatures are seeing salmon vanishing from famous rivers and birds no longer visiting important wetlands.

Claxton, Norfolk Most of spring is here but hidden somewhere in all this quiescence

It is not dense enough to call mist, let alone fog, but February’s invisible damp gives milkiness to the air and weight to the morning’s mood. The ivy leaves in our hedge seem to droop as if they have all been licked downwards, and our garden robin hugs their shadow with its brown back to me. As I walk to the river I notice that the oak leaves by the track, which were frosted copper last month, are in mid journey from leaf mulch to soil.

Across the marsh there is no division between the grey of the sky and land, and no horizon, and the dark of the woods is burred with softness. The north-westerly is mild and lifts only the lightest vegetation – the reed tops by the sides of the path – and the moisture adds to each intake of breath the cold savour of bare earth and dead leaves.

Climate science denial group the Heartland Institute helped inspire Cory Bernardi and Malcolm Roberts to push back against policies to cut emissions

If the dissident conservative senator Cory Bernardi’s new political party shares the views of its founder, then we can chalk up it up as another fringe party firmly in the climate science denial camp.

Ignoring mountains of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry carried out over many decades, Bernardi has for a long time chosen to listen instead to fake experts pushing talking points that walk like zombies through barbecue conversations across Australia.

The evidence suggests the push for government help is an attempt to squeeze money out of unwise investments made at the end of the mining boom

The recent coordinated push for new coal-powered electricity generators in Australia comes as the industry is on its last legs.

The intensified push for government handouts can be seen as a last-ditch attempt for the coal industry to squeeze some money out of the unwise investments it made at the end of the mining boom.

We must shift away from a culture of politically motivated climate change denialism to an acceptance of the truly existential threat now facing humanity

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the world’s climate and environment. The inauguration of billionaire property developer and reality TV star Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States has presaged a new Dark Age of climate politics.

In an opening fortnight of controversial executive orders, President Trump has decreed the expansion of major fossil fuel developments including the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, and the neutering of long-standing environmental protections. In addition, he and his leadership team have made it plain they intend to dismantle many of the Obama administration’s climate initiatives and withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. All this runs in direct counterpoint to the rapid decarbonisation required to avoid dangerous climate change.

Indonesian miners painstakingly sift through the waste for scraps from the largest gold mine in the world: the Grasberg mine in West Papua

Their numbers vary enormously from year to year, but warmer weather will provide wasps with more favourable conditions

Several new species of wasp have arrived in Britain with our warming weather, and their larger relative the hornet, once confined to the extreme south, has spread across England.

But how is our common wasp fairing? Most queen wasps still do not survive the winter. However, it is not cold that will have killed them, but spiders or other predators.

Last week a Scottish Power executive called for coal to be excluded from the UK’s capacity market scheme (Report, 31 January). Five days later UK coal plants were awarded taxpayer-funded subsidies worth up to £72.8m. With the government’s consultation on phasing out coal-fired power generation by 2025 closing on Wednesday, for coal plant operators it must be like being asked to leave the party while being bought a drink.

Likewise, while CO2 emissions are subject to a carbon price floor, its current level is too low to be effective. Meanwhile, the so-called Transitional National Plan grants UK plants permission to pollute above EU limits. TNP’s “pollution bubbles” are filled with toxic fumes that cause 2,800 premature deaths in the UK every year.

UK fails to apply environmental law on air quality, water standards, and the conservation of several species, EU review reveals

An EU review has revealed multiple failings by the UK in applying environmental law, on the same day that the commission escalated its action against Britain for breaching air pollution limits.

Britain has been in breach of EU nitrogen dioxide (NO2) limits since 2010, with London overshooting its annual air pollution limit for the whole of 2017 in just the first five days.

Volunteer? Raise money? Be a citizen scientist? Join us Monday 13 Feb at 1 - 2.30pm GMT to talk about what we can all do to help elephants.

In the face of falling elephant populations around the world, it’s easy to feel a little hopeless. But in fact there are a number of things you can do to help - from volunteering to becoming a citizen scientist yourself, to supporting some of the extraordinary organisations out there.

We’re putting together a database of actions to launch next Monday (Feb 13). To mark the launch, we’ll be hosting an online discussion with elephant experts, discussing what everyone can do, and assessing areas where genuine progress is being made.

House Republicans are explicitly saying that protecting public and environmental health isn’t worth a few jobs or a small cost.

House Republicans have introduced a bill to rewrite the Clean Air Act. The bill, which has 114 co-sponsors (all Republicans), would revise the Clean Air Act such that:

The term ‘air pollutant’ does not include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride.

Despite January rains heavy enough to cause flooding in some areas, the effects of severe drought continue to be felt keenly in many areas of Bolivia, affecting about 125,000 families. A resourceful village in Mizque province has come up with ways to eke out what little water is available

All photographs by Andrew Philip/Tearfund

More than half of people surveyed had never seen a hedgehog, once common in UK gardens

The plight of the hedgehog in Britain appears to be worsening, with a new survey revealing a further decline in garden sightings.

The spiky creature was once a common sight, with the population estimated at 30 million in the 1950s. But that has plummeted to fewer than one million today, with a third of this loss thought to have taken place in the past decade.

Kinder Scout, Peak District Walking along the western escarpment, it feels like the land has been brushed by Arctic exoticism

Driving out of Sheffield, I pass half a dozen men hurrying up and down Manchester Road, pointing long lenses into the glacier-blue sky, like paparazzi, and pull over to see what the fuss is about.

The cause is a flock of exquisite, starling-sized birds, their silky-smooth, dusky-pale plumage flushed with cloudberry amber, their heads topped with a punky crest, and their eyes dark with a warlike black mask. They are ransacking the ornamental rowans lining the road, much to the annoyance of a mistle thrush, which sallies angrily from its berry-laden perch to rebuff the raiders.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 9 February 1917

An alder, its roots undermined by the current just below a bend, fell some years ago and formed a dam across the stream; below the obstacle the silt collected until a long, narrow, sandy islet was formed. On this the snow now lies, a white patch in midstream, and across its narrowest neck is a line of footprints – the “seals” of an otter. I noticed them first last Sunday, immediately after the fall; the otter had been out hunting for its breakfast. These otter footmarks are peculiarly broad; they cannot be confused with the prints left by a dog; indeed, no rat-hunting dog had been there since the snow fell, for there were no marks on either bank. The otter had come down stream, landed and crossed the islet, and entered the water again. From the size of the prints it was only a small animal, but it was pleasing to find that there are some about; as I have no wish for otter hounds to come or for traps to be put down I do not mention the name of the stream, but it is not far from Manchester.

A Congleton correspondent was astonished to see a gull feeding in his garden a week ago. The black-headed gull is now so widely distributed over Cheshire that I should have thought it occurred near, Congleton, though doubtless usually avoiding gardens.

Team of researchers discover three of the frogs once listed as possibly extinct in first reported sighting since 1962

A rare frog that had not been seen in decades has been found in Zimbabwe, researchers have said.

The Artholeptis troglodytes, also known as the “cave squeaker” because of its preferred habitat, was discovered in 1962, but there were no reported sightings since then. An international red list of threatened species tagged the frog as critically endangered and possibly extinct.

David Rose penned an attack described by expert as “so wrong it’s hard to know where to start”

In this new political era, climate scientists and their science are under attack. The attack is from multiple fronts, from threats to pull funding of the important instruments they use to measure climate change, to slashing their salaries and jobs. But there is a real fear of renewed personal attacks, and it appears those fears are now being realized. What the attackers do is identify and isolate scientists – a process termed the “Serengeti Strategy” by well-known and respected scientist Michael Mann who suffered these types of attacks for years.

Ellen MacArthur and the New Plastic Economy initiative are determined to make a real difference in tackling the terrible problem of our plastic-polluted oceans

Last summer Adidas released a good-looking trainer with uppers made using plastic recovered from the ocean. Everyone was very excited, but my response was: “That’s not the most efficient way of cleaning up the ocean.”

Small bits of plastic packaging such as lids, sachets and films pose the biggest nightmare

Borth y Gest, Snowdonia I’ve seen glaucous gulls squabbling around rubbish-tips on Baffin Island, but never before in Wales

Recent winter storm-surges from the cold north brought with them surprising visitors. Walking the coast path westwards I looked up and studied a clamorous swarm of gulls, vivid against a gunmetal sky. One, singled out in my glass, was bulkier than its companions, translucent somehow in the subdued light, its long wings white-fringed – a glaucous gull, Larus hyperboreus.

I’ve seen these fine seabirds before, squabbling around rubbish-tips at Iqpiarjuk and Pangnirtung on Baffin Island; or bathing in turquoise pools atop icebergs in the Davis Strait; or following the boat in which I crossed Admiralty Inlet when bound for the Brodeur Peninsula in quest of narwhal. Until now I’d never had a clear sighting of one in Wales, though it’s merely uncommon rather than rare as a visitor here.